In brief: Earlier this month, rumors surfaced that suggested Nvidia has been quietly working on an alternative to their latest RTX 20-series GPUs: the GTX 1660 Ti. Now, information from HardOCP has confirmed those reports, while also giving us some extra details about other cards Nvidia may have in the works.
According to HardOCP's sources, Nvidia is also planning to launch the 1660 and 1650 - and soon (more on that below). All three GPUs will run on the same Turing architecture that their RTX cousins do, but without the pomps and frills that real-time ray tracing brings to the table.
In terms of performance, nobody really knows what to expect yet. If previous rumors still hold true, the 1660 Ti will likely have 1536 CUDA Cores, 6GB of GDDR6 VRAM, and a 192-bit memory bus. However, we don't have any information about the specifications of the other 16-series GPUs, and numbers alone aren't terribly useful at this early stage.
As always, we recommend waiting for independent benchmarks before making any final purchase decisions. Fortunately, you probably won't be waiting long for those to pop up.
The 1660 Ti is reportedly set to launch on February 15 with a $279 price tag, while the 1660 will hit store shelves in March at $229.
The 1660 Ti is reportedly set to launch on February 15 with a $279 price tag, while the 1660 will hit store shelves in March at $229. The lower-end GTX 1650 will cost a mere $179, and it will arrive towards the end of March.
The pricing of these cards could make them excellent options for budget-minded gamers; particularly those who are uninterested in Nvidia's pricey RTX cards, or anyone who is struggling to get their hands on affordable 10-series GPUs.